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I've been having heart palpitations. Skipped heartbeats or heart beating too fast. Sometimes, I can see it through my shirt, working so hard.

I heard back from the doctor this morning. My EKG showed some very normal PVC's (premature ventricular contractions) and he encouraged me not to worry.

So I'm trying not to. When I notice it speeding up, I'm trying to see it as a sign of LIFE, a sign that, as Rumi says (and as my friend Cristina beautifully illustrated above), the water is pouring from the spring!

Just yesterday, I cried four times. First, with a friend about how hard I am on myself. Then listening to a client talk about work her organization does with orphans. Then, over a friend's story about being adopted and the fear of abandonment she carries with her all the time. Finally, for Loretta when she cried from the bottom of her little heart about feeling left behind. And I followed up on an assignment from my therapist, writing a Letter of Resignation for the duties and roles I take on that have become burdensome and unhelpful. No wonder I felt exhausted when I went to bed!

Remember a few days ago, my last post, when I said I wanted to feel it all? Sheesh.

But here's what I really believe--I can handle it. YOU can handle it! If we spend our energy avoiding the lows--our feelings of loss, grief, incompetence, fear, anger--then we don't get the highs either. We miss out on the goods. We miss out on really feeling our hearts beating, the blood and life of it all.

Don't I just keep saying the same things here over and over? About noticing, about being present to chopping the kale or feeding the dog, about connecting with one another even when it is scary, about having open, undefended hearts when the world is telling us to protect ourselves?

Something's welling up in me, and it's clear that the action's coming straight from the wounds. Not in spite of them! When I pay attention to my own healing, to my own shadows, longings, and fears, something happens. Something is happening. Plan on hearing about it.

Debut

If you let it, a time comeswhen you step into the outline of yourselfand you fill it, joyfully, completely.In spite of the tears,there is nowhere, no one elseyou want to be.

The first notes rise from the pit,the orchestra that's been tuning,warming up, your whole life.

You're in the light,your face flush with what you knowand what you don't,and everything belongs.